China's Guangzhou, Singapore seek to forge closer ties

Representatives from China's Guangzhou city and Singapore discussed here Thursday openness, innovation and collaboration aimed at forging closer ties between the two sides.

The discussion came as Guangzhou, the capital of China's southern Guangdong province which is preparing to host the 2017 Fortune Global Forum later this year, hosted a roadshow in Singapore.

At the event, Guangzhou Vice Mayor Cai Chaolin said Guangzhou and Singapore share many similarities including city scale, cultural background and language, and Singapore, in fact, even hosted the first Fortune Global Forum in 1995.

"Our forward-thinking outlook and cooperation in the past years have enabled us to pursue meaningful projects together that have enriched our economies," the vice mayor said.

"What lies ahead is exciting. We look forward to have more collaboration between the two sides."

Two letters of intent on the Sino-Singapore collaboration were also signed at the roadshow.

Guangzhou is one of the most important business centers in China and also a gateway to the outside world.

In the last five years, Guangzhou has witnessed an average of 10.1 percent increase in its gross domestic product (GDP), with local service industry's growth approaching that of developed economies, representing 66.77 percent of the total GDP in 2016.

Guangzhou has continued to increase its investment in advancing technologies talent, and improve convenience, effectiveness and efficiency of trade facilitation and services, thus creating more opportunities for cooperation with Singapore and the region. Endit